I’ve written many times before about reporting sexual harassment in SF/F, and about the problem of harassmentat SF/F conventions. While I think it’s important to talk about the problem, and to hold conventions and individuals accountable when they mess up, it’s also important to recognize the things folks do right, and to help groups improve. To that end, and with the help of some friends, I’ve tried to put together a “starter kit” for conventions wanting to create or improve their harassment/safety policy.

To help all attendees and staff feel welcome, valued, and as safe as possible.

To define and discourage harassing, abusive behavior.

To make it as safe and simple as possible for people to report harassment, if necessary.

To clearly establish for staff and attendees how reports of harassment will be handled.

To set fair consequences for such behavior.

The existence of a clear, published harassment policy sends a message. So does the lack of such a policy. Harassment is a real and ongoing problem, whether you’re talking about a huge media-oriented con or a smaller “professional” event. Choosing not to publish a policy on harassment can suggest that your event doesn’t take sexual harassment seriously, and may turn a blind eye to such incidents.

Defining harassing behavior sets a clear expectation of what will and won’t be tolerated, and can help to prevent common excuses like, “He’s just socially awkward and didn’t know he was harassing her.”

A sexual harassment policy lets attendees and volunteers know how seriously your event intends to respond to incidents. Having a written policy in place beforehand also makes it simpler for people to know how to report, and gives staff the information they need on responding to reports.

A statement of the potential consequences for anyone choosing to harass others.

Cheryl Morgan suggested the following, which I hadn’t considered, but agree with: “The policy should make it clear that the victim’s wishes will be respected. It is better to have incidents reported and to take no action, than to have the incidents not reported because the victim has reasons not to want action taken.”

“Windycon and ISFiC reserves the right revoke the membership of anyone failing to conform to the letter and spirit of these policies, those of our hotel, and the laws of the City of Lombard and the State of Illinois.”

Readercon’s website includes a list of possible consequences, up to banning the harasser from the con and from future events. The same page provides information on how to report harassment, as well as a link to their internal procedures for handling reports.

3. Where and how should the harassment policy be published?

On the convention website.

In the program book.

At the event.

In internal (con staff) material.

The nice thing about a website is that you have more room to work with. You can lay out the full details of your policy, as Readercon has done. Many people will check out your website when deciding whether or not to attend your event. As many in the SF/F community saw with the run-up to the 2013 World Fantasy Convention, if your website lacks a harassment policy, people will notice.

The program book should also include your convention’s harassment policy. If you don’t have as much space, you might choose to print a summary with a link to the website for more information. But the program book should include the main points.

Of course, lots of people don’t read the program book, which is why it’s a good idea to mention the harassment policy elsewhere. Reference it during opening ceremonies. Post flyers at the convention. (There are some slightly blurry sample flyers from CONvergence here.) Include a copy of the policy at the registration desk

If you have a central phone number and/or email address for reporting harassment, make sure that’s publicized as well.

Arrange for convention staff to be trained on how to handle reports of harassment. If only certain individuals are trained to respond to these reports, make sure all volunteers know who those people are and how to contact them.

Establish a clear chain of communication up to the person in charge of safety concerns (usually the safety chair or convention chair).

If possible, plan to have at least two people on call at all times who are able to handle reports. This allows one person to focus on helping the person who was harassed while the other addresses the needs of the convention as an entity and the other attendees.

At the Convention:

Make sure staff and volunteers are easy to recognize (most cons have badge ribbons, staff T-shirts, and/or other identifiers), and that they know what to do if someone reports harassment.

Find a relatively safe and private place to talk to the reporting individual.

Document as much as possible, including the time of the event, names and badge numbers, location, etc.

Share the information with the convention’s powers-that-be.

Investigate quickly, and follow up with the harasser.

Enforce any appropriate consequences.

After the Convention:

Solicit feedback. Ask attendees and volunteers what worked, and what problems they encountered.

Follow up on any unresolved reports.

Some of this seems obvious, such as finding a safe place to talk. But there have been had instances where someone was assault at a convention, and the con staff basically interrogated her in the middle of the lobby. Don’t do that.

If there’s a problem with a particular individual, the con staff need to be aware of this. If additional reports come in while an incident is being investigated, the fact that this isn’t a first report can affect how staff respond.

There are many more conventions with good harassment policies out there, and more groups are creating and publishing such policies each year. But these should be enough to get you started thinking about how to write or update your own.

6. Do harassment policies really work?

Yes.

It’s true that publishing a policy doesn’t guarantee your event will be harassment-free. Just like laws against theft and vandalism didn’t stop someone from smashing the window to my wife’s van a few years back and stealing everything they could grab. However, the existence of those laws sends a clear message about what will and will not be tolerated in the community, and establishes consequences for anyone choosing to violate those rules.

Creating and publishing a harassment policy for your convention will help reduce the behavior, let your members know you take harassment seriously, and help you to respond more effectively when it does happen.

34 Comments

Ooh; just what constitutes “harassing photography” or recording? Documenting conventions is one of the main things I do at them, and people generally seem to be very supportive of the results. And there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy at an event anybody can buy a membership to.

Has anyone got samples of harassment policies for an event which takes place partly indoors and partly in public areas like a city-owned park? We could presumably pull the badge from a convention member who is behaving badly in the park, but if it’s a member of the public harassing con-goers, I think we’d have to refer that to the police. It seems awkward to say “Tell us if it’s X but tell the police if it’s Y” and I’d love to see how others have handled it.

That’s *way* past anything I can be comfortable with. Partly it’s just sloppy writing — some of the policies proposed or discussed make it against the rules of the event to take a shot including a crowd in the background without explicit permission of every person in the crowd. That’s unreasonable by my standards, but I don’t think it’s really the intention, either.

More broadly, people seem to be claiming unreasonable rights of what they think of as privacy. It’s an ongoing cultural debate, and I’m on the side of openness. I don’t think there’s any reasonable expectation of privacy at official events at a gathering which anybody can buy a membership to, which is what conventions are. In particular I think that restrictions aren’t effective in getting people what they want (they’re easily circumvented, more and more so each year), and to a large degree they cost the community its history (it was *wonderful* having access to some hundreds 1960s convention photos to scan for Chicon 7; I could see all sorts of things about fannish history that people wouldn’t think to write down at the time). And give people a false feeling of safety (based on two falsehoods, I think).

Does somebody know, “really”, what the legal limits are on reporters and accredited press photographers at various public but ticketed events? How far the sponsors can go controlling their access, in particular? (Yes, reporters and accredited press photographers are somewhat of a jump to a different but related topic, I do understand that.)

ByTheFarmsteadDecember 3, 2013 @ 8:44 am

Hmm, archival photographs that aren’t intrusive would seem okay to me, and I’m very private. Beyond a certain distance, like maybe 20 feet, photos are part of wearing a costume…

Maybe if it’s an issue, photographers could register like they would for art show bidding and have a ribbon if they plan on taking photos of strangers. Basically accredited for the con.

ByTheFarmsteadDecember 3, 2013 @ 8:46 am

Let me add that the 20 foot thing assumes no zoom.

ValerieDecember 3, 2013 @ 10:26 am

I think there are complicating factors in the readercon incident — the con’s sexual harrassment policy is “zero tolerance.” And the punishment is banning for life. Zero tolerance is stupid; it removes ANY judgement from punishment. It means that in order to deal with a sexual harrassment accusation by educating the harrasser, giving him a warning, throwing him out of this con but allowing him to attend one ever again (seriously? Never? Even if he’s gone through a twelve-step program, seen the light and been harrassment-free for ten years?), the conrunners have to declare the behavior “not sexual harrassment.” Why not instead take these things very very seriously but stop short of zero tolerance PLUS death penalty? I understand that ignorance is no excuse, but when you add ignorance to zero tolerance and death penalty, it ends with conrunners deciding it must =not= have been sexual harrassment because they don’t want to ban someone for life. Banning for life is a pretty steep penalty for being the jerk who still hasn’t figured out that what was accepted ten years ago as just part of con life is now unacceptable behavior. It’s counterproductive to make the tolerance of a crime so low and the penalty so steep that it in effect discourages people from agreeing some behavior IS a crime.

David M SteinDecember 3, 2013 @ 11:20 am

As a member of the Dorsai Irregulars, we’ve been on the front lines of dealing with harassment at conventions for many many years. This is no where near a new problem, it’s as old as fandom.

Everything you’ve said is sound and a great starting point.

One thing I’d like to add, and it is a rare but sad thing that happens, is that we have had to deal with false reports. People who use this as a means to inturn harass someone else. Sometimes these are malicious, sometimes just someone mis-interpreting someone’s actions.

All reports of harassment must be taken with the utmost seriousness, but it is very important to offer a measured response after a balanced investigation.

A bad response is almost worse than no response. Sometimes the victim isn’t the obvious party.

Lastly, it is important to communicate back to all involved parties the resolution of the incident. This will assure that everyone knows the convention listens, and acts.

One should never use the term “Zero Tolerance”. It means “We don’t want to make a decision about the problem”.

ValerieDecember 3, 2013 @ 3:09 pm

Jim, I think that’s great, and I applaud whoever decided to rely on human judgement instead of robosentencing. Zero tolerance and ubersteep penalties sometimes seem like great ideas until it comes time to implement them. Eventually people realize that cutting off a hand for stealing a loaf of bread…maybe not a great solution.

ValerieDecember 3, 2013 @ 3:11 pm

David, I agree. Zero tolerance is for people who don’t trust in human judgement.

I’d like to add as a recommendation stretching the tentacles of the policy a bit. I enjoy hosting room parties at cons. One of the things I feel is part of my responsibility as a host is for my party to be a safe space. Something I’d like to see at conventions is that people (such as me) who are hosting events at a convention, but who aren’t sponsored or endorsed in any way by the convention, have at least some minimum level of training for hosts of these events.

I don’t have a great template for this, but it seems like at least ensuring that all of the hosts know who to direct reporting to would be a good start, and making the hosts aware of what they need to watch out for.

David – what, specifically, are you uncomfortable with? The link I shared states very clearly that they’re not talking about the legality here. They’re talking about things like:

-Not being the creep who tries to get surreptitious pics
-Respecting when people don’t want their pictures taken
-Posting pics with creepy, sexist comments
-Publishing pics of people without permission, or people who’ve asked you not to do so

As someone who’s taken a fair number of pics at events, this sort of thing strikes me as common decency. Sure, you can take it to the extreme and talk about crowd shots and getting the consent of that person who’s only a half-centimeter tall in the very back of the picture, but I think you’re reaching a bit. And that could be pretty easily addressed in the writing of any such policy.

NicoleDecember 3, 2013 @ 5:29 pm

I did a study on convention SH policy for a class. My sample was 288 websites, and I have the results, if you think they might be of use?

I saw earlier this year the creation of a virtual con space with authors like Ms Bujold, so virtual harrassment is/will be at issue too. I would like to note that similar objectifying and harrassment also reaches into virtual fan space like MMOs, though there is even less effective appeal. I know many women who admit to making male characters or personas so they are treated as equals. I would hope that education and enforcement of boundaries might carry over into virtual spaces.

JeffDecember 3, 2013 @ 10:17 pm

Thank you Jim for pulling all this together. Also thank you to everyone who has commented and help broaden the discussion. The convention I’m a part of has been looking into putting together a harassment pollicy for this years con, and the thoughts and implementations that are here are a great resource to help us round things out, help us feel more confidant about the things we’ve thought about, and bring up new things and views that wern’t previouslly part of the discussion.
Thank you all!

Pollicies are essentially legal language; they have to be precise. If the policy talks about “appearing” in a photo, then it does apply to those 8 pixels in the back that represent you.

The other issue is requiring permission for any photo; that makes candid shots impossible, they all become posed since you have to talk to people first. People will rearrange how they’re standing, their expressions, etc., and what I saw that interested me will probably be gone.

I would think that the first step would be the convention either way, since they’re going to need to know about it too. The convention can then contact police. This doesn’t bar individual members from doing the same, but if someone’s harassing multiple people, the convention can log the complaint for all reported people at the same time.

Graydon SaundersDecember 4, 2013 @ 10:06 pm

The default answer is “no”.

This applies to business interactions, strangers, friends, pretty much any circumstance where there is no pre-existing relationship containing a negotiated understanding of the question.

What makes photography sufficiently special that the default answer is “yes”?

HellianneDecember 4, 2013 @ 11:13 pm

Those who are worried that photography/filming policies might interfere with their ability to preserve the history of the con, get the candids they want, and so forth– You have it backwards. The entire point of harassment policies is to put the comfort and safety of those who might be harassed above the convenience and enjoyment of those who might harass. That means it’s the person being photographed who gets to determine what’s okay and what’s not.

Your complaints are the photographic equivalent of “But if there’s a harassment policy, then we men won’t be able to talk to women at all because that would be harassment!” It’s pretty much an admission that you can’t imagine using your camera in a way that isn’t harassing.

Here’s the thing: If you do anything to someone else– photograph them, publish photos of them, kiss them, have sex with them– without getting their explicit permission, then you are running the risk that you’re crossing their boundaries. You should be worried about potentially making someone else feel threatened by trampling over their boundaries. You should not be worried that restrictions against crossing people’s boundaries might interfere in your fun or that there might be consequences if you do so, whether deliberately or unintentionally.

Like other anti-harassment policies, photo/video policies simply indicate that photography without the subject’s permission might be harassing, and if you decide to do that anyway, you are running the risk that you might suffer certain consequences. It’s up to you to make sure that you behave respectfully to your subjects, pay attention to signs that they want you to knock it off, and delete any content they ask you to delete. Don’t want to get expelled from the con? Then don’t be an asshole about photographing/filming people. It’s not complicated. Stop pretending that it is.

Where it reaches the point of encoding in law, the law matches my understanding. No permission is needed to photograph people in most common situations (there are legal restrictions on using the photos for product promotion, and much narrower ones on some other uses, but taking them is not restricted). It’s not that photography is specially enabled; it’s that it’s *not* specially restricted. I can make sketches of whatever I see, too (or could, if I could make sketches at all), and I can certainly tell stories about what I see and hear.

I work to avoid including you in photos as a matter of courtesy, not because it’s legally required. (Haven’t actually seen you in ages that I recall, but I did when I last did.)

What policies a con can establish is an additional question, and I haven’t looked for the case law on that (not limited to cons; but events that any member of the public can buy membership to). How this interacts with first amendment issues (freedom of the press) is also pretty complicated.

You’re lumping photographing into a group of, to my mind, quite different behaviors, and saying they’re all the same. I don’t think they’re that similar.

As to your suggestion that all my photography is inherently harassing, please feel free to check it out on my website — do the people pictured look unhappy with me? Ask a few dozen of them and see what they say. You’ve got completely the wrong end of this one.

TurbulenceDecember 5, 2013 @ 6:27 am

How this interacts with first amendment issues (freedom of the press) is also pretty complicated.

No, it is actually not. Not even a little bit. Cons are private organizations. They can set their own rules for expelling members. None of this changes just because cons sell memberships to the general public.

You do not have the right to enter my house and start photographing without my consent. That’s true even if you’re press. And you do not have the right to barge into a con and start photographing without the con’s consent either. Many cons only give consent conditional on the consent of the people being photographed. That’s their choice and there’s absolutely no first amendment problem with it at all.

ByTheFarmsteadDecember 5, 2013 @ 7:43 am

Ah but cons do spill over into public spaces and the con does not own the facilities. Hotels have other guests, so other people will be able to go through halls, elevators, stairs, nearby streets, and restaurants. So walking into someone’s home is not the same.

Some photography is archival/news/journalism, and not intrusive as you are positing for all photography. Getting into someone’s space, being crude while insisting people display, etc, that’s standard part of harrassment.

I am objecting to saying ALL photos are harrassment/abuse if permission is not granted explicitly. By that strict a definition, taking a picture of a crowd at an outdoor school band concert would be forbidden. Yes, permissions should be sought like if you want a shot of a Femme!Doctor, at least retroactively if you saw a great candid shot, but at some level of distance and detail it’s not intrusive or in your face/intimidating/control. And journalism does happen in private spaces and events too.

TurbulenceDecember 5, 2013 @ 11:43 am

Hotels have other guests, so other people will be able to go through halls, elevators, stairs, nearby streets, and restaurants. So walking into someone’s home is not the same.

Actually, it is. Try and go take photographs of people in a hotel lobbey without their consent. See how long you can do that before the hotel staff order you to leave and call the police to evict you for tresspassing. Hotels are private entities and are legally permitted to kick anyone of their premises, including because one of their clients, a con, asked them to.

Some photography is archival/news/journalism

That’s irrelevent. No one has legal right to trespass on my private property and take pictures of me without my permission. And no one has the legal right to trespass on a Holiday Inn’s private property and take pictures of its guests without their permission.

ValerieDecember 5, 2013 @ 1:33 pm

Free speech/freedom of the press rights prevent the =government= from interfering in your right to free speech/etc. Any number of other entities have a perfect right to prevent you from doing any number of things on their property. Your employer, for instance, can fire you for saying things she doesn’t want you to say or taking photographs at work/while on the job without her permission. Your landlord can prevent you from displaying political signs on the front lawn of your apartment building. Hotels and restaurants are perfectly within their rights to ask you to leave if they feel you’re bothering other guests with your speech/your photography.